Filling the Void

College Football 2016: Week 2

Week 2 of the 2016 college football season didn’t look appealing on paper heading into it, but it provided several great moments. With UFC prelims starting at 7:30 I only watched one game from start to finish, Penn State vs. Pittsburgh.

The Penn State/Pittsburgh game is the first match up between the states only 2 power 5 schools since the year 2000. I didn’t realize that these two schools haven’t played each other for that long. I knew it used to be a big rivalry, and the return of the game at Hines Fields generated the biggest crowd in Pennsylvania sports history.

It was a fun game to watch, featuring a lot of offense with creative tight end pitch plays, and one handed catches. Pittsburgh has a defensive tackle that looks like a grizzly bear. He is six foot something with dread locks at 350 pounds and he sports number 6 which looks strange on such a big dude. The running back for Pittsburgh, Connor, had his first big game back since his knee injury and battle with cancer earlier this year. The running back for Penn State, Barkley, also had a huge game scoring 5 touchdowns.

The game came down to the final drive where Penn State converted on a 4th and 16, but the green QB threw an interception in the end zone to end the game. Pittsburgh won 42 – 39.

Friday night I watched a little bit of the Louisville/Syracuse game. This game was dominated by the Louisville QB Lamar Jackson who had 5 touchdowns in the first half alone. I only watched the game for about 30 minutes and saw him score 3 times. He finished the game with 411 passing yards, 199 rushing yards, and 5 touchdowns, one he scored after hurdling a defender. The 610 yards of offense he had in the game is an ACC record, and after just 2 games he has a total of 13 touchdowns. It will be fun to watch if he can carry this momentum to this week’s game against #3 Florida State.

Here are the other crazy things that happened in College Football this weekend:

#2 Clemson struggled to defeat Troy by 6 points. A Clemson wide receiver pulled a Desean Jackson and dropped the ball on the 1 yard line in celebration before scoring on a punt return.

#17 Tennessee beat Virginia Tech at a NASCAR track to a crowd of 150,000 people. Who cares.

#22 Oklahoma State loss to Central Michigan on a 51 yard hook and ladder Hail Mary on an untimed down. The play was crazy, but it turns out the MAC referees made a bad call. They inaccurately called a penalty on the last play by Oklahoma State which gave CMU the ball and the opportunity to run an untimed play. I saw that the MAC referees have been suspended for the call. Oklahoma States chances of making the playoff are now much smaller because of the loss.